TIMING IS EVERYTHING

It was a Saturday afternoon, say about 1o’clock, I had gone to school that day to drop some documents the Registrar had asked me to bring, As always the line at the office was so long, I think I was number 47 or something, and they were only just attending to number 12, I knew it was about to be a long wait. So I brought out my phone and earpiece bracing myself for the boredom, after nearly 2 hours, it was my turn, i dropped what I needed to, and was headed out, on leaving the registrar’s office I bumped into a friend (well not really friend, a block mate, I had 2 classes with, so we were cordial) and she had just finished attending a seminar or was it workshop. Anyway she was headed home, I was headed home, we live close by each other, both our houses are a bit far from campus, so she suggested we commute together, I was like “yea, why not”. On leaving campus, I brought my phone out of my bag, and my battery was on like 1%, and I was expecting a super important call, so I had to apologize that I wouldn’t be able to leave now, I had to go back in and charge my phone, she was like okay okay, I’ll just go ahead and stuff, we said our good byes and left each other. So I went back in charged my phone, and about an hour or so later, headed home.

Now it’s Wednesday the following week, I get to class and everybody is looking gloomy and blue and in my mind I’m like what’s going on, but being who I am, I just carrying on listening to my music and playing candy crush until the professor arrives. The professor comes in, connects her laptop with the projector and all of a sudden, on the screen I see RIP Aaliyah, in my mind I’m thinking wait, “Aaliyah died like 15 years ago, and I don’t think she died in December and, how does this even relate with the class.” On the next slide, I see the picture of the girl I was supposed to commute with on Saturday. At this point I’m just totally shocked. After the little tribute, lecture commenced and stuff. For the whole day I wasn’t myself. It was just so shocking. I had literally seen her 4 days ago, hale and hearty. Anyway I had got to find out by the end of the day,(because of course, that was the trending topic on campus) that she had been attacked on her way home on Saturday and she had been terribly injured, had been rushed to the hospital, was on life support for some days, and had unfortunately passed away that morning.

Of course, I had the regular human thoughts of it could have been me and the rest, and I felt really sad she had gone so soon. Even though I didn’t know her too well, the few times we had conversed, she was so sweet. I also became more grateful for life, You know how in your morning prayers, you say a little “thank you Lord for waking me up e.t.c”, but for that whole week I became so much more extra with it, “thank you lord for the skies, for the cirrus clouds, for the stratus clouds, for the cumulus clouds, thank you for the flour that was used to bake the bread I’ll eat this morning, thank you for the farmers who picked the rice I’ll eat for lunch, thank you for the engineers that work at Toyota and produce cars for us to get to our destination everyday” lool I was so extra!

Anyway I’m sure y’all think I’m about to school you on “cherishing everyday”, “you never know when it’s your last day”, “live your life to the fullest”, BUT NO! you already know that I’ll assume. Rather I’d like to focus on how TIMING IS EVERYTHING!!!

It may be danger waiting on the road, and you staying back just 10 minutes, may spare you a whole lot of calamity. Likewise, you may have the brightest, most life changing, extraordinary idea, but if executed at the wrong time, it would bring about nothing but a mediocre result. We’re usually in a hurry to get things done and are so overzealous, with sayings like “time is money”, ”opportunity comes but once” we want everything done now, pronto, which isn’t always the best option unlike we’ve been taught to believe. You know how if you have a great tweet, powerful stuff, you’ve been thinking about it a couple of hours now, been structuring and restructuring it to be short enough to make the 140 characters limit yet catchy enough to hit the people like a tsunami, but you post it by like…7am… you damn sure ain’t getting no love with the retweets or favorites.. haaa! It’s the same thing with life or certain decisions or ventures or things we want.

For instance, imagine I had one of those portable phone chargers, I wouldn’t need to go back in to charge my phone, and I would have probably been on that same journey, and who knows..

Funny how I had been thinking of getting one of those mouse pad charger things, but somehow I just didn’t have time, and when I’d think about it I’d beat myself up like “why don’t I have this yet, I need to get one already” but now that i think of it in retrospect, the time I was fussing over it definitely wasn’t the right time to get it, I’m more than thankful I didn’t have it. If someone had told me 2 weeks prior to this event “don’t get it” I’ll be like “so long as I can afford it why shouldn’t I get it?” But in due time one comes to the realization, certain things don’t work out when we’d like, for greater things to fall into place at a better time. Sometimes knowing the right time is even beyond our human ability, we must just learn to be sensitive and not always too pushy even when all the signs say stop.

Now I’m not saying be complacent or don’t be persistent and perseverant about certain things, I’m just saying, if you need to force it and force it, maybe you should let it go for a little bit, and if need still be, then you can come back to it. Moreover, sometimes certain things take process, especially with regards to us as human beings, sometimes we need to develop, grow, and sometimes even make some mistakes before it’s the right time. Also in like a business venture or something, being a “doer” isn’t always the way forward, contrary to popular belief. Sometimes we need to observe the field we’re trying to venture into, strategize properly and organize before we take action.

If in March I’m joking around with a friend, saying some “yo momma” jokes, it’s funny and acceptable, then his “momma” passes on in April, and I see this same friend in May and in the bid to cheer him up say those same “yo momma” jokes, not only would it be ridiculous and insensitive, it would be a major case of doing the right thing at the wrong time .. yea! So that’s the thing… TIMING IS EVERYTHING!